Activision CEO: Star Wars: The Old Republic may not make EA any money

The head of World of Warcraft developer Activision Blizzard doesn't believe …

Star Wars: The Old Republic will soon become the latest in a long line of online games attempting to tackle the behemoth that is World of Warcraft, but Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick doesn't seem too worried. In fact, he believes that The Old Republic may not even be profitable for EA.

During the recent Reuters Media Summit, Kotick reportedly questioned whether or not the much-hyped Star Wars MMO would be able to steal subscribers from WoW. He also explained that due to the licensing fees for the Star Wars name, which is owned by LucasArts, he's unclear how profitable the game will be.

"Lucas is going to be the principal beneficiary of the success of Star Wars," Kotick explained at the event. "We've been in business with Lucas for a long time and the economics will always accrue to the benefit of Lucas, so I don't really understand how the economics work for Electronic Arts. If you look at the history of the people investing in an MMO and achieving success, it's a small number."

Earlier this year, EA CEO John Riccitiello revealed in an earnings call that the game would be "substantially profitable" with just 500,000 subscribers. By comparison, WoW currently has more than 10 million subscribers.

EA has reportedly spent upwards of $100 million on the development of The Old Republic. The game was originally announced in 2008 and is set to launch on December 20.

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1998's Thief: The Dark Project was a pioneer for the stealth genre, utilizing light and shadow as essential gameplay mechanics. The very thing that Thief became so well-known for was also the game's biggest development hurdle. Looking Glass Studios founder Paul Neurath recounts the difficulties creating Thief: The Dark Project, and how its AI systems had to be completely rewritten years into development.

War Stories | Thief: The Dark Project

War Stories | Thief: The Dark Project

1998's Thief: The Dark Project was a pioneer for the stealth genre, utilizing light and shadow as essential gameplay mechanics. The very thing that Thief became so well-known for was also the game's biggest development hurdle. Looking Glass Studios founder Paul Neurath recounts the difficulties creating Thief: The Dark Project, and how its AI systems had to be completely rewritten years into development.

I played the beta(s) and enjoyed it more than I thought I would, can't wait for the launch.

I personally don't care at all what Activision says about anything. They may know how to make money, but they don't really know how to not murder a franchise.

Despite the fact that they own the most successful franchise the gaming world has ever seen?

Which is currently hemorrhaging subscribers, which fits pretty well with the "murder" concept.

After 8 years, it's still king. NO other game can claim that. Hemorraging or not. It's a success. After 8 years, you expect a game's population to die out. Hell, after 2 years you expect a game's population to die out. You're really fishing for a reason to trash on WoW.

Why take that angle when there are so many easier angles? Yeah, WoW is popular. But so is Justin Bieber. It is impossible to make the argument of "success=popularity." Simply put, I hate WoW. I don't find it fun. But that doesn't make the game terrible. Other people like WoW. And while that doesn't prove the game's quality, it does prove its success.

I mean.... damn these companies for wanting to make money. How.... corporationy of them.

I felt the game was a kids game I personally wanted to commit genocide against the gungans but thought there was no way a lucas game would allow that as if it did it would have to remake the films without jar jar stinks not a bad idea imho. If they had done that originally they would currently be making or have made 7,8 and 9. The game is pretty good though I was disappointed not to get ganked once in the pvp version of the game I mean can you realistically call it a pvp server when you can get to level 20 without once getting involved in a pvp encounter in world play. I feel the game is good and will sell well I wouldn't be surprised if it sold 4 million copies in the first week of release the force is strong but there are still so many known faults to work out that the final week will be crazy before early release and will ramp up substantially from there as soon as the early players start playing. I dont think it will beat wow though as there are so many wow enthusiasts but it should give it the best run for its money yet seen in an mmo as there are just as many force lovers according to the most recent brittish census including myself who is a jedi knight according to my response .

I played the beta(s) and enjoyed it more than I thought I would, can't wait for the launch.

I personally don't care at all what Activision says about anything. They may know how to make money, but they don't really know how to not murder a franchise.

Despite the fact that they own the most successful franchise the gaming world has ever seen?

Which is currently hemorrhaging subscribers, which fits pretty well with the "murder" concept.

After 8 years, it's still king. NO other game can claim that. Hemorraging or not. It's a success. After 8 years, you expect a game's population to die out. Hell, after 2 years you expect a game's population to die out. You're really fishing for a reason to trash on WoW.

Why take that angle when there are so many easier angles? Yeah, WoW is popular. But so is Justin Bieber. It is impossible to make the argument of "success=popularity." Simply put, I hate WoW. I don't find it fun. But that doesn't make the game terrible. Other people like WoW. And while that doesn't prove the game's quality, it does prove its success.

I mean.... damn these companies for wanting to make money. How.... corporationy of them.

Not for MMOs. Any MUD veteran will tell you of the amazing longevity an online game can have. EQ still has a thriving player base. It's not what it used to be but Sony would kill it if it wasn't profitable, let alone make new expansions for it. 8 years is actually just getting to a mature phase in MMO lifespans. EQ and UO are much older and that doesn't even touch on MUDs that have been in operation for decades.

Sure the Xbox-360-gotta-have-the-new-bling generation can't grasp this but Blizzard knew it was building a long running franchise. The continued revenue stream is the only reason why $100M budgets get approved for MMOs that "might" succeed versus Madden, Skyrim, Battlefield XYZ and MW 2345 being the only $100M budget console titles. In the console space, attention spans are tiny, MMOs, not so much.

I don't understand why people harp on about 10million subscribers etc. Get back to me on some trending figures after this new mmo has been released for a year. Then you can quote me some figures that might mean something.

Exactly. If you've played the beta you know that they are on to something. WOW killer? Maybe, maybe not, but WOW is old and stale, and SW:TOR raises the bar for MMO's by adding excellent voice over, and real storylines (in other ways it's pretty conservative). Not to mention that the setting is much cooler, and more family friendly than WOW's.

I couldn't disagree more; the cut scenes are so tedious outside of the main plot, do i really need to interact and comment on a "go kill/fetch me that" random quest. TOR has good points but the bad points are weighing heavily for the casual gamer. They didn't evolve or learn from anything done before if anything its like vanilla wow all over again, anyone going from wow 4.0 to SWToR will not understand why it takes forever to get anything done and will get terribly fustrated....run way over here (cut scene, nonsensical replies) , now run all the way back(cut scene yadda yadda), next...run way over there and over and over. and that's just the first 20 levels, then you get a ship(for some reason) and a crew(ok) and a companion that seems to be able to kill things better then you(and pulling them off you at the worst time) but can't handle not aggroing everything around them. Wanna craft something? better hope you're not questing because without said companion you are easy pickings and have to wait for their return.

I already played wow 1.0 i don't ever want to go back there, it was awesome at the time but we've moved on. Bioware's mmo nostalgia might come back to haunt them if they can reacted quickly and speed some things up.

o and launching 5 days before Christmas, can you image the server load and wait times on dec 26th?? whoever thought that was a good idea should not have a job Jan 1st.

I would just say that TOR is not the game for you. I never felt bored with the cut scenes, in fact, I thoroughly enjoyed them. I actually walked slowly when in buildings and sometimes outside, just to enjoy the scenery. It felt like I was playing MY story, not some generic MMORPG stuff.

But then I don't care about the rush to level cap, about hard core raiding and PvP. I'm a role player and I enjoy a good story. I'm looking very much forward to playing TOR co-op with my wife.

On WoW: We played WoW for almost five-and-a-half years, and we enjoyed it tremendously as role players. I'm pretty good with the history of the Forsaken (my favourite race in WoW) and I just loved exploring the different angles on playing and developing Forsaken characters (All together, I played about six different Forsaken characters).

But WoW has grown stale on us. I do not wish BlizzActivision any ill, and why should I? I enjoyed this game a lot, but it's time to move on.

From what I saw of the game it started off very much as a generic MMO but by the time I got past the starting area it had already introduced a few interesting twists. Just enough to get me to preorder the game and try it out for a month or two, if I find it something to keep me interested longer I keep playing it more but if I don't I move on to the next one.

I'm something of an omnivore when it comes to MMOs tho and since WoW went all casual (and me with it) I don't tend to stay in any single one for too long, maybe I try old ones again later but will never keep a constant subscription up.

Also, if this game is not profitable it WILL get shut down without much delay, this is EA we're talking about after all.

Not related to this below post, but I've seen this several times. WoW is 7 not 8. It was released Thanksgiving week 2004.

epiccollision wrote:

I couldn't disagree more; the cut scenes are so tedious outside of the main plot, do i really need to interact and comment on a "go kill/fetch me that" random quest. TOR has good points but the bad points are weighing heavily for the casual gamer. They didn't evolve or learn from anything done before if anything its like vanilla wow all over again, anyone going from wow 4.0 to SWToR will not understand why it takes forever to get anything done and will get terribly fustrated....run way over here (cut scene, nonsensical replies) , now run all the way back(cut scene yadda yadda),

I learned the hard way, say something like this on the tester forums for ToR and you get yelled down HARD heh. I mean, sometimes you have a cutscene for finding a damn datapad that starts a quest. I mean, really?! There is nothing given in these cutscenes that imparts more info than a quest w/response options like say, the quest at the end of Uldaman in WoW. The one where you find out Troggs and Dwarves are related. You have pages of information that can be read quickly, various responses to pick, etc.

What is even worse is when you look at the options sometimes and tone isn't really well implied. So you take an option that looks like it will be a slightly sarcastic remark, then they say something completely different and cold. Many times I would pick something I thought would generate positive points from my companion only to see negatives pop up. There was no clear rhyme or reason on some of those responses. The Bouinty Hunter quests, generally Mako responds positively if you give her props, brag about yourself or about your goal. Some of the responses look like they will be about that, but instead are much more negative than their quick 4 word version implies. Sometimes those 4 words don't really sum up what you say at all.

epiccollision wrote:

Wanna craft something? better hope you're not questing because without said companion you are easy pickings and have to wait for their return.

o and launching 5 days before Christmas, can you image the server load and wait times on dec 26th?? whoever thought that was a good idea should not have a job Jan 1st.

Yeah WoW launching 2 days before Thanksgiving was pretty stupid too. I wonder on the crafting if you can save all crafting tasks, queue them up and then set your flunkie to doing them just before you logoff, come back later and they're all done. Or do you have to remain ingame for them to get done? If they are having you shuffle off your crafting duties to your crew, you really should be able to schedule several things and let it run whether you're online or not. Highest I ever got was 11 and never bothered w/picking up a crafting skill, so I don't know personally.

Exactly. If you've played the beta you know that they are on to something. WOW killer? Maybe, maybe not, but WOW is old and stale, and SW:TOR raises the bar for MMO's by adding excellent voice over, and real storylines (in other ways it's pretty conservative). Not to mention that the setting is much cooler, and more family friendly than WOW's.

I couldn't disagree more; the cut scenes are so tedious outside of the main plot, do i really need to interact and comment on a "go kill/fetch me that" random quest. TOR has good points but the bad points are weighing heavily for the casual gamer. They didn't evolve or learn from anything done before if anything its like vanilla wow all over again, anyone going from wow 4.0 to SWToR will not understand why it takes forever to get anything done and will get terribly fustrated....run way over here (cut scene, nonsensical replies) , now run all the way back(cut scene yadda yadda), next...run way over there and over and over. and that's just the first 20 levels, then you get a ship(for some reason) and a crew(ok) and a companion that seems to be able to kill things better then you(and pulling them off you at the worst time) but can't handle not aggroing everything around them. Wanna craft something? better hope you're not questing because without said companion you are easy pickings and have to wait for their return.

I already played wow 1.0 i don't ever want to go back there, it was awesome at the time but we've moved on. Bioware's mmo nostalgia might come back to haunt them if they can reacted quickly and speed some things up.

o and launching 5 days before Christmas, can you image the server load and wait times on dec 26th?? whoever thought that was a good idea should not have a job Jan 1st.

Based on your comments I get the impression that you don't appreciate the story elements of a game, which is just fine. I have a friend who feels the same way. For him it's action, leveling, and strategy that gets him going. I'm not going to recommend SW:TOR to him, because I know he'd get frustrated with all the "yadda, yadda" as you put it. It sounds like it's not the game for you either.

On the other hand just because some players like yourself don't like it doesn't mean it won't be spectacularly successful. I personally hate FPS shooters like Call of Duty, but obviously there's a huge market for those kinds of games. Likewise, I think there's a huge market for the kind of game that SW:TOR delivers.

As to server load, I think that's why they've said there would be a "limited" (artificial of course) number of copies sold at launch. If they limit it to a certain number initially, and - based on the stress tests they've already done - they know how many servers it will take to manage that load, they can avoid that sort of problem.

quandrak I was part of the stess test weekend and it never once passed the stress test in fact the server was snowed under each time and information that should have appeared didnt. All we had to do was press the question mark and search for sith I never once found out what a sith was doing this during a stress test so imho they failed the test. This test was designed to test the information servers and based on the resulting stess test they should now know that if enough people search at the same time it will crash the server. Yet after each test the subsequent test failed just as miserably so what does that tell you.

What is even worse is when you look at the options sometimes and tone isn't really well implied. So you take an option that looks like it will be a slightly sarcastic remark, then they say something completely different and cold. Many times I would pick something I thought would generate positive points from my companion only to see negatives pop up. There was no clear rhyme or reason on some of those responses.

I recall bumping into something similar in Mass Effect 2, so maybe it is a Bioware thing?

I would just say that TOR is not the game for you. I never felt bored with the cut scenes, in fact, I thoroughly enjoyed them. I actually walked slowly when in buildings and sometimes outside, just to enjoy the scenery. It felt like I was playing MY story, not some generic MMORPG stuff.

But then I don't care about the rush to level cap, about hard core raiding and PvP. I'm a role player and I enjoy a good story. I'm looking very much forward to playing TOR co-op with my wife.

On WoW: We played WoW for almost five-and-a-half years, and we enjoyed it tremendously as role players. I'm pretty good with the history of the Forsaken (my favourite race in WoW) and I just loved exploring the different angles on playing and developing Forsaken characters (All together, I played about six different Forsaken characters).

But WoW has grown stale on us. I do not wish BlizzActivision any ill, and why should I? I enjoyed this game a lot, but it's time to move on.

Goodbye WoW, welcome TOR. Good luck to both of them.

Don't take it the wrong way cut scenes are fine, and in my book i encourage them, IF they have something to add. When you see a Cut scene in WoW its because something monumental is about to happen "wrathgate" "arthas dying" (not so much in uldum but they tried something newish) after a while with SWtoR it just felt i was playing the game as a third party observer and because my responses at the time made no sense i felt control was actually being taken from me.

I know Bioware's intention is use this as their "hook" but it is just overused, save it for the important story line and elements, not the bread and butter quest of "kill that, and come back to me" quests. It just gets silly and in the end Bioware's time and energy could be spent elsewhere where the game is lacking(hello interface team). It just seems they have the idea in their head every interaction has to be "special" but by making it mandatory they are doing the opposite, bland and tedious. Also my biggest gripe come from the cutscenes themselves if you go from a cutscene to combat(which happens quite often) you are completely disoriented and your companion is aggroing everything and you have to start peeling, which for me was a natural thing to do, as its not my first rodeo. Even i wanted it not to be so stressful, having to figure out the strength of 4 targets in less then 3 secs identify the big bad and mitigate them first and move down the line; any hesitation on my part, me or my companion was severely wounded and then i had tostart working from behind, i'm not sure exactly how to fix it but going from cutscene to bloodbath in 0.5 sec is not enjoyable.

The game is ok. not great, its not a revolutionary idea, and i know its right up someones alley. They took KoToR and spliced it into an MMO which is fine KoToR was a great game, it was a great idea for Multiplayer universe it just needs more work in a few key areas and it needed to learn from its predecessors a little more. We are a gaming public now there are going to be certain expectations and if they are not met, a segment of that public is going to check out very early and go back to what they find familiar.

WoW comparisons are unfortunately the bar that was set as this game is functionally right in its wheelhouse. With 4.3 Blizzard sent a very clear note regarding their direction "Casual is King". Cataclysm, i would say, had the steepest learning curve going from questing to instances(which i enjoyed but bads and casuals hated) people who had been placated by the ease of use at the tail end of wrath left for greener pastures. Hour of Twilight is easy and approachable, Raid Finder takes the best parts of raids and makes it consumable, and leaves the competent with regular raids and the hardcore Heroic modes. We'll have to see what impact it has in numbers but the reactions are quite positive from the general community. At first they were leery "you can't fully PUG a 25 man raid" but reports back are generally positive. Of course there are always naysayers whining about having the game being spoonfed to them but hey you want to test your mettle the option is there for you complain all you want about "welfare epics" but causal is king, Bioware would be wise to pay attention. Most of my criticism is with that community in mind if i were playing the game as that person this is what i would find tiresome.

Kotick is being disingenuous and he knows it. SWTOR is going to enjoy stupid success. Whether it is able to dethrone (not kill, that's ridiculous) WoW within 2 years comes down to whether Bioware can continue to crank out compelling content fast enough to keep up with the players. In that regard, the compelling class quests should buy them some time since a lot of players are going to want to play through every class (and no, the mirroring in no way detracts from that experience, IMO). I also think the solo-appeal of the game is going to bring in a lot more new MMO-players to the table.

What's really impressed me with BW's efforts is how well they've managed to consistently have their cake and eat it too on design decision after design decision. Take companions. They've basically made it easier to play the game solo in a way that doesn't overly generify class roles. While it attracts solo players, it also acts as training wheels, showing them how perform as a tank or healer, or DPS character with a complementary companion at their side.

Star Wars gives it mass appeal that WoW never had before its launch. They've got the Kotor 3 factor of a horde of fans wanting to see something resembling a sequel to that series. In spite of the vociferous trolling, the beta weekend response has been overwhelmingly positive. Pre-orders are likely to break a cool million before launch.

And why on Earth can't I recall any other game that let you kick somebody in the balls? I've been through two beta weekends now. It never gets old.

Kotick is being disingenuous and he knows it. SWTOR is going to enjoy stupid success. Whether it is able to dethrone (not kill, that's ridiculous) WoW within 2 years comes down to whether Bioware can continue to crank out compelling content fast enough to keep up with the players. In that regard, the compelling class quests should buy them some time since a lot of players are going to want to play through every class (and no, the mirroring in no way detracts from that experience, IMO). I also think the solo-appeal of the game is going to bring in a lot more new MMO-players to the table.

What's really impressed me with BW's efforts is how well they've managed to consistently have their cake and eat it too on design decision after design decision. Take companions. They've basically made it easier to play the game solo in a way that doesn't overly generify class roles. While it attracts solo players, it also acts as training wheels, showing them how perform as a tank or healer, or DPS character with a complementary companion at their side.

Star Wars gives it mass appeal that WoW never had before its launch. They've got the Kotor 3 factor of a horde of fans wanting to see something resembling a sequel to that series. In spite of the vociferous trolling, the beta weekend response has been overwhelmingly positive. Pre-orders are likely to break a cool million before launch.

And why on Earth can't I recall any other game that let you kick somebody in the balls? I've been through two beta weekends now. It never gets old.

you are entitled to your enthusiasm but lets not try and equate units sold to success, this is a sub based game costing over 100million with significant development costs after the fact. Selling a million is also been done before and has been no indication of unbridled success and in fact its popularity and timing may have the opposite effect, no one like queues measured in hours only to play on a congested slow realm.

If i do decide to play it'll be in late Jan or Feb i generally like to be paid to do QA

quandrak I was part of the stess test weekend and it never once passed the stress test in fact the server was snowed under each time and information that should have appeared didnt. All we had to do was press the question mark and search for sith I never once found out what a sith was doing this during a stress test so imho they failed the test. This test was designed to test the information servers and based on the resulting stess test they should now know that if enough people search at the same time it will crash the server. Yet after each test the subsequent test failed just as miserably so what does that tell you.

I agree that those tests failed, but they are also basically immaterial. No one really cares about looking up a term, they just want to play the game and in that sense it was succesful. Besides those tests where contrived, not real play situations.

I agree that those tests failed, but they are also basically immaterial. No one really cares about looking up a term, they just want to play the game and in that sense it was succesful. Besides those tests where contrived, not real play situations.

The tests were not immaterial. They know how many requests they had actually coming in at once (b/c you know not everyone was doing it), so they can figure out how badly outmatched their systems were and increase by that amount, multiplied by the expected realm populations. I do software testing, for a healthcare company not video games, and you don't release something database related w/o heavy testing for the servers. If you don't perform load testing, you are guaranteed to fail.

Think about it this way, if the database that houses the information for their knowledge base is designed similarly to the database that hands out items from vendors or quests or whatever, it could well have similar performance problems w/10,000 people turning in quests at the same time. Also, yes, people do sign up for betas b/c they want to play a game, however, they are also signing up to test and provide feedback. Some of us take that seriously and I'm willing to bet that the fact that I would file bug reports and always fill out the comments that would pop up frequently during questing is part of why I made it into the smaller population of this weekend's testing.

Even if people didn't do the specific tests like the search and submit tests, they are still providing information from them being able to look at logs and see how many people there were on at once, what kind of cpu and ram usage they experienced, how many crashes, etc.

you are entitled to your enthusiasm but lets not try and equate units sold to success, this is a sub based game costing over 100million with significant development costs after the fact. Selling a million is also been done before and has been no indication of unbridled success and in fact its popularity and timing may have the opposite effect, no one like queues measured in hours only to play on a congested slow realm.

If i do decide to play it'll be in late Jan or Feb i generally like to be paid to do QA

Number of pre-orders was one very small portion of my argument but I certainly think interest above and beyond what was hoped given that it was a Star Wars MMO is a good thing. The beta weekends I was in were both stress tests. The first was brutal at first but got more and more pleasant to play as they introduced optimizations over the course of the weekend. The second one was opened up to pretty much anybody who wanted to get in and ran smoothly for me from the start. I had more lag problems on COH this week. There were a few obvious bugs here and there (icons not showing on maps in certain areas, etc...) but the game was entirely playable and they were pushing all of those servers hard. There were queues on many of them during prime time but you never had to wait in one if you could let go of playing the same character all weekend (I managed to get a smuggler to 17 in spite of never waiting in a queue.

I don't have a crystal ball but I suspect it will be more than two to four before Bioware's ability to introduce more content where it's needed will be tested. I'm not convinced VO will slow them down drastically. Yes, it's been years but they still managed to do an obscene amount of it in those years. They've got all their ducks in a row to add more.

The segment of gamers they're likely to run into trouble with first are those who just want to spacebar through all content to rush their favorite role (that being the first one they tried) to 50 and then get mad at the results of their slamming-crayons-down-on-table-and-shouting-DONE behavior when they realize there's not really a whole lot of variety in the end-game grinding that they're used to.

Fortunately, for those like me, who want to actually enjoy the process of leveling, who prefer solo games to typical MMO generic experiences (outside of brilliant costume party sandboxes like COH) there are eight characters to play through. And I'm going to try them all. And I'm really going to enjoy messing around with crafting and trying different ACs and specs out. And I have a wife and a job so that's going to take quite a while. Solo players dig this game. It's not just about capturing other games' market share. It's about bringing new players to the table.

People are right that the game isn't particularly innovative as an MMO. There are things that are so recognizably WoW it's not even funny. You buy core skills at certain levels. Each AC has three skill-enhancing trees requiring 80% focus on a given one to get to the "woohoo" stuff at the top. They played it safe there. What they did that was innovative was take something they know very well and injected it into the MMO. That's where the game is brilliant. AND it's Star Wars. All they had to had to do was not suck. They did a lot better than that.

I'd like to point out, til other companies think up something new other than taking off from a already made series. WoW wil not have a legit competitor, i love world of Warcraft but id like to see another game actually challenge it and stick to its word. On the notes like R.I.P. WoW, etc iva had at least 20 people in my friends have tried the SWTOR, and are not impressed, many of which prior said it would be better in thier opinion, rather than jump to a conclusion, like Kotick did, lets wait and see. I don't much care for Kotick but i player prior to the merger, and stick around solely for Blizzard, so lets not be him and wait and see , to those of you who are for WoW and those who are for SWTOR. He came into it after WoW was already gaining momentum, so i disregard what he says regularly.